Pre-Scriptum:
English is not my native language, I apologize in advance if there are grammatical errors or syntax!
May i speak in all this? xD
I think border question is important but it is not the main question ihmo.
So, let's do a little recap,
we have:
Government
Legislative
Society
Economy
Religion
Military
Welfare
Foreign Policy
And now we want to add border question on it. That's ok but, i think missing something important on all of this.
We can speak about government, about society etc, but, where is the ideology on those civics?
For Ideology i mean the content of the laws, i mean the character or nature or behavior of the whole nation.
I think we have to do a step back and think about it.
On this latest AND releases (i'm just playing with 819) Empires are totally desappears, i have never accepted the removal of 'fascism' civic but ok, maybe they could put in something related i thought, but i'm still waiting xD
Empires have existed until XX sec, why we have to give them up totally? For what? "Despotism" civic? It is all wrong.
Despotism civic IS NOT Fascism/Totalitarism.
Infact, a large number of philosophers (from Aristotle to Hegel) see "despotism" as the immediatly step forward from the "state of nature" so it is the most primitive form of state government (for example Montesquieu "De L'Esprit des Lois " book 1 chapter 5, and expecially book 2 chapter 8,9,10 and 11; or book 5 chapter 14,15,16,17 and so on).
So, if despotism is the most primitive form of state goverment (and infact in the game we discover it very soon, it is not suitable for that kind of task in industrial/modern era, really not).
If you don't want to re-enter fascism form of state, that is ok, but we can do another thing, we can think about to make a new civics type, "Ideology", and according to political philosophers from Thomas Hobbes to G.W.F Hegel we can built it easily and with consistency.
We could use Ideology civic to give to the entire nations a deeper "psychologism", a coherent and logical behavior of nations.
So, assuming that all this is just a suggestion and i'm totally open to receive your critical, i allowed myself to do this new civic section following in the footsteps of the political philosophers.
Ideology :
Let's recap this, we can use Idelogy to describe the character, the behavior and the set of ideas shared by the nation. And, as we know, the "mirror content" of the ideas of a nation is reflected in the law. The laws are the mirror of civilization, and every civilization than his time has a different mirror.
But we should not confuse us with the question of legislative power, we're not talking about the "form" but the "substance" of the law, just as understanding
substantia, substance, that is what lies beneath and holding the entire apparatus of the law, and then its content.
Before i begin, in these descriptions i speak of "law."
Here mean "law" the way of Montesquieu and other philosophers Enlighteners and contractarians: * The law has the characteristic of having a main character of fixity. The law is constant and stable. *
This means that the law can not be changed instantly and at your liking. If this happens, it means that it is not a true law, but it is a "decree".
According to this view, for us moderns, "law" it can be understood as a large complex of stable laws and these may vary only by following a long process. (We could also call it "constitution" but then we risk creating confusion).
The law therefore is a limit, a stop to the central power, and this reflects the vision of the world in that particular historical period, which we call ideology.
1 -
State of Nature
This is the primary set, according to contractualism philosophers (expecially Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Rosseau and Kant), STATE OF NATURE is the absence of a state. There are no laws, there is no political structure. Is the dawn of civilization.
2 -
Laws
In this case, I consulted the "Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte" of Hegel. He thought that the next step to the state of nature was a state supported by laws. On its phenomenological way, however, a State does not immediately reach a way of a State founded on "Reason" (he called a state founded on "Reason" Zustand Ethik, "State Ethics").
But before the "State Ethics" there are several intermediate forms, including precisely a State which is not a state based on "reason" ("laws of reason") but the "laws" that make up what he called "abstract right" . The example of these states is precisely that of Ancient Athens and especially ancient Rome where it was born and reaches its climax, in fact, the "private law" next to the criminal law.
The laws of ancient Athens and those of ancient Rome were a masterpiece of law.
Unlike the states of nature (or those who are just one step after the state of nature, such as the despotic East) states that rely on Laws ensure the recognition of private property and from this the recognition of the other person (and therefore of the external world outside of the same person) the first and real form of State, for Hegel, is made here. It is the state of nature that despotism, as we teach philosophers contractarians, has no laws. And a state without laws is not a real state.
3 -
Dominion
I chose the term Dominion to indicate one thing: "Dominion" is not simply a synonymous of "Empire", here it must be emphasized one thing, and that is the corruption of the state founded by the same laws.
In this case, I examine the texts of Machiavelli (ie "The Prince" and "Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius").
In his philosophical apparatus, Machiavelli praises every where in the political splendor of Rome, but a precise historical moment of Rome, that the Roman Republic.
The fact is that when Julius Caesar gets the power and laid the first foundations of the empire, the whole meaning of the law is overturned. Republic means "Res Publica" "object of the public or public power" and meant that all potentially had the ability to enter into the merits of public affairs. This is the meaning of a state that is based on the laws (what we've seen before).
Julius Caesar and his successors instead destroy the republic and the deeper meaning of its laws and replace it with another vision, the dominion of course, that the State is yes based on laws, but these laws say one thing and that is that the state belongs to a one person, the Emperor.
Dominion means a state founded on the laws that the legislative center of the universe, however, recognize it as a single person to which all must obey, through the law.
4 -
Divine Right
This type of legislative structure is developed especially since the Middle Ages.
Similarly to the Dominion, the universality of the law it no more depends by result of the history of peoples, but because it is assumed that the justice of the law comes only from God.
And so, the right to rule obviously not up to the citizens, but it is up to only one (or a few) on the condition that they are in perfect communion with the divinity and religion. From all this comes the whole new vision of the law, the law is now a
religious tool, to govern internally (psychologically) and externally through public punishments, inquisitions and torture the citizens those who trample the laws of the state, which in more radical cases, coincide with the religious laws themselves.
The people no longer have any authority to enter into the political affairs (as in Dominion), but now they no longer have the ability to think and act freely and critically. The states that are founded on the divine law do not allow freedom of thought and reason. And the rulers of these states must be accepted by the religious authorities.
5 -
Social Pact
The idea of ​​modern social pact or social contract comes to us, by modern contractarians philosophers, especially by Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau.
Although they have different ideas, they travel the same path and that is the centrality of the citizen in the formation of the state.
Leaving aside the theory of Hobbes that flows into Absolutism (although it is an absolutely different from the previous absolutism, because it was founded by the people and for the people, the universal figure of the absolute monarch as a single "representative" of the people) would like to focus on Locke and Rosseau.
A state founded by a social pact is a state that is defined as "a state of law" (or State of Rights"). Which means a state founded by citizens and for citizens. The state is no longer owned by a single one, the state is no longer owned by the Church or religion, but the state belongs solely and exclusively to the citizens, who formed it by joining together through a "pact" or "contract" in which they are established the fundamental laws.
First among these fundamental laws is precisely the issue of sovereignty: in the states of right the sovereignty belongs to the people joined together by the pact.
As you know, liberalism was born and developed in these states.
The most striking historical examples are just the English Revolution before and the American and French Revolution after.
In the State of Rights, citizens not only claim of having their rights respected, but they as a people, the founder of civilization, they claim that the power of government should be formally legitimized by the people through the direct consent (election) or indirect consent (parliament).
6 -
Imperialism
If the State of Rights was a nation built through a pact of union of all citizens, with imperialism, instead, ideology developed as a new form of colonialism between the ninth and twentieth centuries.
Imperialism, the people who created the nation through the social compact, see themselves as a master of the world, the demiurge of all the backward nations.
I put in the imperialism to make a distinction between this form of ideology and to what will prevail, even if for a short time in the twentieth century: totalitarianism.
Because there is a difference between Imperialism and Totalitarianism.
Imperialism has not an exclusively negative accent, many nations have developed with Imperialism.
The ideology of imperialism is not only, therefore, to conquer, to influence and monopolize the politics and economics of other weaker nations, but also has a civilizing role, in some way.
And in terms of laws, it opens the way for what will later become the laws of racial superiority, because, let's remember, the "concentration camps" were not born in Nazi Germany.
In summary, the ideology of the laws of Imperialism is the fact that people were formed from the social pact, which they created their State, their Country, want to spread their legislative masterpiece in the most backward nations, dominating them.
7 -
Totalitarianism
To speak of totalitarian ideology, I will only to consider the final part of the book by Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism."
What Hannah Arendt reiterates this in her book is that totalitarianism and despotism are two totally different things.
If for some reason, Totalitarianism there might seem an evolution of despotism, in reality much of it has gone away.
What is the basis of the vision of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt is, before anything else, rationality.
It may seem a paradox, but totalitarianism is nothing more than the result, corrupted and taken to the extreme of "bureaucratic rationalism" and Ideology as the fundamental basis of the laws.
Totalitarism is an amazing evolution of rationalism, which escapes from the hands of man, evolve dramatically to become, paradoxically, irrational.
If despotism, that is still strongly linked to the "state of nature" was characterized by the absence of laws, Totalitarianism goes "beyond the law" as Arendt says.
The law in the Totalitarianism goes to the highest bureaucratic levels, before becoming "law-vapor", that is, a system of laws that exists but is not used for the purpose that had laws in all other forms of government existed previously.
In totalitarianism, the law is doubled, tripled, just as in institutions.
There are doubled institutions, parallel institutions, one state apparatus that splits into two remaining united at the same time.
For the Nazis, the duplication of the political structures was essential, and it consisted of the "union partition" (what a paradox!) between the State and the Party. For example, at the same time they had two ministries of the interior, the two ministries of Foreign Affairs, the two ministries of the economy and so on.
This was used by the Nazis to establish a regime of perpetual shift of political power, so that when a political office (eg a ministry) became problematic it could be replaced instantly with the duplicate one, demolish the problematic one and rebuild everything again, and then restore the duplication.
And all this was happening instantaneously, because the transfer of power was lightning, and this allowed the totalitarian regime to avoid problems of internal stability.
As you can see it is profoundly irrational despite being entirely rational for its purpose.
And this applies not only to the ministries and offices, but also for the laws, even the laws were duplicate, triplicate, there were laws on the same subject but they said totally different things, so that the citizens could no longer orientate themselves.
The purpose was just that, to lose orientation to the citizen through the vaporization of the law.
The only compass that the citizen had available was the totalitarian ideology, the cult of the leader. Faithfully and blindly follow the totalitarian leader, the only one who knows what needs to be done and how to do it.
Of course, in totalitarian states there is no freedom except one expressed and permitted by the party.
The totalitarian ideology will change depending on the totalitarian state taken into consideration, for example, Nazi ideology is based on the superiority of one race over all others, the only one who had the right to dominate the world.
Instead the Soviet era, was the supremacy of the Communist society, the only one that was truly free and able to guide the destiny of all nations of the world through this vision of freedom.
8 -
Human Rights
And finally we come to the legislative masterpiece of our time, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
It is exactly the opposite of that on which it is based totalitarianism.
We could also define Human Rights as the directed evolution of the justice of the rule of law.
In a state that bases its principles in a constitution and that constitution, in turn, reflects the contractualism ideals and also liberal ideals we have the new interpretation of "State of rights".
Because, previously, the idea of ​​State of rights, was based only in a narrow way, the nation-state.
The new idea of State of Rights, insist on the ideology of human rights, is that man is a citizen of the world, and as such, all human beings and they must all have the same rights in the same way.
The law in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is, in fact "universal" because it is no longer simply a law of states, but it is a system of laws that wants to prefigure supra-national level.
Countries that have ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, accept and defend (in principle) the basic human rights such as freedom of speech, the right to vote, the right of association and so on.
This new perspective of the world opens the way for globalization in economic and social terms.
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So is this.
Of course, this is all theoretical and explanatory level, as a possible project.
If we want to take this route of course we can discuss this and the effects to be given to these possible civics.
Otherwise everything will remain as it is, of course
And i repeat that, the fact that now is impossible to see the "empires" in the industrial age and beyond disappointed me . I would like more variety, and more depth.
I hope this helps! ^^